The Fellowship is called AdAPTS (Adaptive Aerostructures for Power and Transportation Sustainability), and is a £1.1M, 5-year research project. The project will create wings and blades for aircraft, helicopters, and wind turbines that can continuously adapt their shape in response to changing conditions. This will lead to less fuel burn for aircraft and helicopters and greater power generation from wind turbines.
AdAPTS will build on Dr. Woods’s expertise in shape adaptive, or "morphing" structures, maturing a number of compliance-based morphing technologies that he has invented, while also developing in parallel powerful new tools for the analysis and optimisation of these complex, highly coupled systems.
Dr. Woods will also work directly with industry partners from Airbus, Vestas, and Leonardo Helicopters to explore the promise of these technologies in real world applications.
"I worked very hard on this proposal, and am very excited that I now have the time and resource to pursue my vision of a more sustainable approach to aerospace engineering", he commented.